Going hiking on North Manitou Island

I am packed. This was no small feat. I have 39 pounds of things in this backpack…. Including about 3 liters of water. I have no idea how in the hell I will carry it as far as I need to. I put the pack on in my bedroom and walked out to the kitchen…. I thought I was going to die. The first day of my hiking trip we are scheduled to walk 4 miles. That is just to the campsite. These gung-ho women I am traveling with will probably want to go further and farther than that. I may be in serious trouble here.

There were many packing questions I had that I just had to guess at. Like: how much toilet paper does one person go through in 6 days? I have no idea….. maybe I could have Googled it- but I really feel they would just be guessing too. I have one extra outfit in my bag and my bathing suit…. But I insisted on 6 pairs of underwear. I do not think this is excessive. I really like clean underwear, and I just do not want to take fewer pairs and beat them against a rock and wring them out to dry on this trip.

Macy waited until I was all packed and had everything crammed into the bag (for the 3^rd time) to mention that I should fill the water bladder to make sure everything fit with the water in it. So I unpacked everything and filled it. It fit… it just made the bag heavier.

I am concerned that I will not have water, electricity, bathrooms….. and internet for 6 days. I have no idea how I will fill up the time. I’m going to keep a journal but I really dislike handwriting everything. Typing and auto-correct are really the way I like to go now. (My 8^th grade typing teacher would be amazed…. He didn’t think I’d ever learn to type!)

I think I will miss my family even more than flush toilets…. And that is A LOT! I worry about what I will miss at home and what’s going on in the real world. Also, there are no chairs, I really like chairs. I think this island should invest in a few picnic tables. I am not sure if I can even put the pack on from the ground…. And if by some miracle I can get it on, I wonder if I can get up off the ground with the pack on without some kind of rope system… or a crane.

Ok, enough of these thoughts. I’m just going to try my best. Did I mention there are a lot of snakes on this island? Not gonna worry about it, but I will keep my tent zipped tight! Wish me luck!! Good thoughts and prayers are very welcome too! J

Mosquito's

The mosquito's are horrible around here this summer! Worse than I have ever seen. There are these new 'super-size' ones here too.... they can bite through jeans and really hurt. I have been stung by a couple of them, and I seriously think they have little Red Cross pint size collection baggies strapped to their backs... they need them because they take A LOT of blood!

The sign above was up at a near-by store. It attracted a lot of attention... and hopefully a few bats!

Other signs that tell me I am not the only one that thinks the mosquito's are out of control this summer...

I drove past a neighbor the other day. She was headed from the house to her mailbox and was wearing a bee-keeper pith helmet!

We tried to put Kirby out on her run line that day... she looked at us like we were crazy! She looked me directly in the eye and I swear I could read her mind. She said, "Look Mom, I'll do my business super quick and we'll both go back inside away from these bugs! Don't you dare leave me out here with these little monsters!"

A few days later, Pepper and I went for a walk and we passed a women pushing a stroller that had mosquito netting all around it. She stopped to chat a moment and I commented on the netting. She told us it had come with the stroller but she had never seen the point of using it before this week. Pepper, the mom and I all looked at the little baby safe inside the netting girgling happily as we stood there swatted at bugs. You know we all stared into the little stroller and wished we could be in there too.

I suppose they will be around until the first frost... and as fast as summer is flying by, that won't be too long from now. :)

Tomato Hornworm

This worm is BIG! He invaded my garden with a lot of his family and friends. I was not happy! :(

The whole family has spent lots of time trying to get all his cohorts out of my tomatoes. Unfortunately, by the time I realized what they were they ate most of my little potato plants.

The funniest thing about the situation was the look on Pepper's face when she accidentally touched this big fella! She did not realize it was a worm and just reached out and touched it with her finger.... and it was a bit squishier than she expected! She isn't really a gardener, or an "outside girl" or a bug lover at all... so when she touched it her look was very funny. I wish I had taken a picture of that look, but it does make me smile just thinking about it!!

We have the worms pretty well under control at this point. I paid the boys .10 cents per worm that they removed so they were quite motivated. Tomatoes are starting to come in... I can't believe how fast this summer is going by!!

Camp guests

It is the middle of July and I am finally camping! …and blogging. I have been asked (read: reprimanded) by several people wanting to know why I have not put up any new posts lately. I guess my only excuse is that I have been doing other stuff.

For many camping trips, if we have room in the car, etc. we let the kids bring a friend to hang out with. It makes things go much smoother because then Pepper and I do not have to be the main “cruise directors” of each trip and have to find entertaining things for everyone to do… friend can provide entertainment.

Nothing teaches you better how truly trained your own children are until you take others for a long weekend! We took one kid (a friend of Macy’s) that lost his bike (we felt so bad that we couldn’t find it that we bought him a new one) We thought it had been stolen until a park ranger showed up with it at the end of the trip! Another child loved to poop. Seriously… in the RV. Big time. I am not sure what his mother fed him, but it wasn’t pretty… and the ventilation in our camper wasn’t as good as I thought. Pooping in the RV isn’t a big deal… its not like we make our kids hold it or feed them only hard cheese, but the shower house/flush toilets were just up the drive… our kids just know to use those. Many of the friends were messy. Underwear left in the middle of the floor, wet towels on the couch, spilled milk and cereal on the table those were all to be expected I suppose. One little friend of Dori’s woke up in the middle of the night. She came into our room and stood crying over us until we woke up…. That startled me a bit.

This trip we have brought just the boys (Dori is in Europe with Kiwi and Macy is on a church trip). We also brought along 2 siblings from church. These guests are (so far) my favorites. They are experienced campers. I am sure they could teach me a thing or two about ‘rustic’ camping. Boy guest is accident prone, daring and chatty. A lot cuter and more clever than I ever gave him credit for in church. Girl guest is charming. Polite, helpful, quiet but seems to be enjoying herself and a good leader for all the boys. She does a good job keeping boy guest in line and will also call for help saying things like, “He is not listening to me…. Could you tell my brother to step back from the fire before he burns his eyebrows off…AGAIN?!”

I was a bit worried about bringing them. One is vegetarian and the other is allergic to dairy. We eat lots of meat and dairy. As boy guest said, “Dairy products make me get really puffy and vomit…. A lot” Oh goody! And girl guest mentioned that her tofu hamburger could not come into contact with any meat products. A little tricky when cooking for 6 on a grill smaller than the average comic book.

But darn if they aren’t the most independent, self-sufficient kids I’ve met. They hauled in their own stuff, found spots to stow their gear, set up their own tent, bait their own fish hooks and I only have to tell them things once! We’ve had them with us less than 24 hours, but things are looking good so far.

I am a bit concerned that their Mother will be mad at us when we return. I am sure she won’t be happy that they ate pop-tarts for breakfast (they had never had anything except the whole grain kind they get at the food co-op). They also went up to the camp store/arcade. I went to check on them… Boy guest was holding a plastic rifle shooting at make believe bad guys and girl guest was watching, a candy cigarette dangling from her bottom lip. :)

Tubing on the river

My children are already asking me to go ‘tubing’ with them. It is August so it is pretty warm…. Although the temperature was 48 degrees last night…. Brrr!! It is really not a difficult sport. The object is to get your butt balanced in an inner tube and float down the river at a leisurely pace. The most strenuous part really is watching the bank until you see the path that will lead you to the truck you parked (without going past it!) and climbing up the river bank carrying the inner tube and any other stuff that needs to come along too. (like the cooler, the sun block, the bug spray, the children’s inner tubes, their empty water bottles, their shoes, sunglasses, etc…. ) Between the hauling of the tubes to the river and that last, most strenuous part is the real joy of tubing. First, there is making sure everyone has a tube and can get on it. (It is very embarrassing when you aim your butt for the tube hole, miss and end up soaked up to your neck! … yes, that has happened to me. I try for the “I meant to do that” expression, but I don’t think anyone buys it) Then there is tying the tubes together so they float down the river as a group and no one gets left behind. With this, there is also the consideration of making sure that the kids are separated enough…. J gives them all paddles to help “push off the sides” but I think the oars are more for splashing then for any real functional purpose. So, off we go. A lot of tubes floating at a really slow pace. Four adults and a whole lot of kids. The adults are trying to adjust their butts in the tube (dragging butt on river bottom= no fun!) The kids are all trying to thwack each other with their oars singing “99 bottles of pop on the wall”…. Oh, the joy!! Going down the river to where the truck has been parked takes about two hours. However, that is going straight down the river without stopping. There are 2 problems here. First, we never go “straight” down the river in our tubes…. We zig zag. Just like a sailboat fighting a headwind, we bounce off one bank and zip across the river to bounce off the other one. The second problem is we stop. We stop to look at fish. We stop to see how deep the water is. We stop to let someone pee. We stop for a splash fight. We stop to switch tubes. We stop to see flowers, turtles, bugs, whatever else there might be there to see. After 4 hours of this cursed “relaxing” I am looking for the truck…. Any truck. I want out. By this point, my sunblock has worn off so the parts out of the water are burnt and hot, the parts in the water are cold and getting wrinkled and pruny. My beverage is long gone, the bugs are biting and buzzing. I have been splashed and bounced off too many banks and my tube has gone under too many low hanging branches…. Many with big spider webs… ick.. I am starting to notice that the air in my tube does not seem to be as full as it was at the beginning of the trip and I fear I may be riding on the mini-titanic. We round a bend and the kids all start to cheer. I perk up, straining in the distance to see the bank we are approaching. I am expecting to see my beloved Chevy 4X4 Pick up truck. Instead, I see a rope dangling from a tree. The kids all love this rope. For them, this is the highlight of the trip. They climb the tree, swing out over the river and they are instant Tarzans and Janes. Silently, I wonder how no parent has yet tied a noose in the end of that rope and ended all this suffering!! Being the loving parent and good sport that I am…. I cheer as each child climbs the tree and swings out. I encourage the kids to take turns and I laugh with the other parents about how skilled the kids are. Meanwhile…. I try to find a little shade for my hot spots and a little warm breeze for my cold ones. I wonder silently if my butt cheeks will ever feel normal again. The only thing worse than having to stand in this 8 inches of water is knowing that I will have to remount that horrid tube again. Well, summer is ending and I have once again survived ‘tubing’ season. I will always treasure the memories I have of seeing the kids having so much fun on the river. This may surprise you after reading this…. But when they ask me again next year if I will take them tubing…. And you know they will…. I’m gonna volunteer Pepper!! ☺ ........